EPM (Ellen) Mangnus PhD

I am a Postdoctoral researcher in the Sustainable Healthy Diets Through Food Systems Transformation program (SHiFT). I am part of a team that studies the political economy and governance of food system transformation.

My broader focus is on change processes and particularly the effects on disadvantaged groups in society. As a development worker I came to learn that such processes are often steered by blueprint models for governance, designed in offices and exported to practice, sometimes resulting in injustices or implications for sustainability.

My initial research focus was on the manifestation of such governance arrangements in practice and the change trajectories they catalyse. In my PhD on market governance arrangements in Mali, I studied how farmers organized market access and how that differed from the ‘Western-style’ cooperatives that were strongly promoted by donors and the government. In my post-doc at Utrecht University I studied how so-called Inclusive Business Models transformed local food production and consumption in Kenya, Ethiopia and Ghana .

More recently I shifted to better understanding how such change processes can be steered towards more sustainability and justice.

I am driven by a strong sense of justice and I believe that foregrounding power relations and inequalities helps us understanding what changes are needed for a more just and resilient foodsystem. On a theoretical level I combine elements of food sociology, political economy and transition studies

I believe bridges between theory and practice are crucial for societal change. Therefore I engage in journalism, creative writing and dialogue facilitation. I regularly write for VORK and Vice Versa. Other media include: Groene Amsterdammer, Vrij Nederland, de Correspondent and MO*Be